Consumers and merchants in today's marketplace have access to a wide variety of technologies for extending credit or otherwise transferring monies for goods or services (“products”). For example, consumer and merchants use traditional debit technologies such as paper checks. A check refers to a draft or order for a certain sum of money payable on demand to a certain named entity, the entity's order, or to the bearer thereof. Generally, the face of a check includes magnetic ink character recognition (“MICR”) characters that can be read electronically. The MICR characters typically include a checking account number, the bank transit number, the check sequence number, and the like. In addition, the MICR characters may indicate whether the check is a company check or a personal check. The form or font of the MICR characters and their position along the bottom edge of the check are generally prescribed by standards promulgated by the American National Standards Institute (“ANSI”), which are incorporated by reference herein.
Paper checks are generally processed through clearinghouse (“ACH”) networks, which can include some or all banks, clearinghouse corporations, the Federal Reserve bank, or the like. For example, a payor, or check writer, may authorize an originator, such as a grocery store, to debit the payor's checking account by writing a check for, for example, groceries. The originator forwards the authorization to an originating depository financial institution (“ODFI”), such as the grocer's bank. The ODFI sends the authorization through the ACH network to a receiving depository financial institution (“RDFI”), such as the payor's bank. The RDFI then can transfer funds by debiting the payor's checking account and sending a credit through the ACH network to the ODFI, or grocer's bank.
To avoid many drawbacks associated with the foregoing paper check processing, such as processing delays measured in many days and sometimes in one or more weeks, ACH networks now provide for electronic check processing. For example, merchants can now have personal checks converted to electronic ACH debits, often by scanning in paper check data at the point-of-sale, and returning the paper copy of the check to the consumer. The paper check data generally includes data representing the MICR characters, an amount, a payee, a scan of one or both sides of the paper check, and the like. As can be expected, the electronic ACH debits can be processed at much greater speeds due at least in part to the lack of paper handling that will occur. Moreover, some banks are processing a day's electronic items prior to processing the day's paper items.
The decreased processing delays associated with the electronic ACH debits often advantageously provide more consistent deposit patterns back to merchants and decrease the delay in discovering and stopping the use of fraudulent checks. Additionally, as discussed in the foregoing, electronic ACH debits also advantageously allow merchants to immediately return the paper check to the customer.
Other technologies available to consumers and merchants in today's marketplace include traditional credit and debit card technologies. While these traditional card technologies enjoy wide acceptance as a method of paying for products both in modern online and traditional paper processing environments, they have significant drawbacks for consumers and for merchants. For example, as compared with the banking population, a much smaller percentage of consumers have or use one or more credit or debit cards. Moreover, the issuer of card technologies often charges high interest rates to the consumer, while also charging high fixed or high variable processing fees to merchants. The high rates often render smaller incremental charges via traditional card technologies impractical. Also, more and more consumers are unable or unwilling to pay down their debt, so they resort to revolving that debt from one credit card to the next. In addition to the foregoing, traditional card technologies can be subject to fraud, fines, or the like.
Still other technologies available today include modem payment technologies, such as, convenience or loyalty cards, radio frequency payment devices such as Easypay, Speedpass, Fastpay, toll road transponders, or the like. Generally, a consumer first enrolls in a payment technology with a merchant or a gateway service. During enrollment, the consumer often provides a credit or debit card account from which debits will be made. The merchant then issues, for example, the payment device to the consumer. When the consumer desires to purchase products from the merchant, the consumer presents the payment device to, for example, a receiver device designed to communicate with the payment device so as to uniquely identify the consumer's associated credit or debit card account. The merchant then bills the consumer's card for the purchase of the products.
The foregoing payment technologies are finding wider acceptance among consumers as the payment technologies often provide a very convenient payment mechanism, and are finding wider acceptance among merchants as payment technologies often generate consumer loyalty. However, because the foregoing payment technologies often employ traditional card technologies as the backend payment mechanism, these payment technologies unfortunately assume many or all of the foregoing drawbacks associated with the traditional card technologies, including, for example, the inability to practically service smaller, incremental-type charges.